


I've Never Been Found, Till I Found You

by thalia_muse_of_comedy



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Red String of Fate, gratuitous use of ch 387
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:20:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28259871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thalia_muse_of_comedy/pseuds/thalia_muse_of_comedy
Summary: A canonverse red string of fate au where strings are a measure of time, not distance.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 14
Kudos: 98





	I've Never Been Found, Till I Found You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maevethell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maevethell/gifts).



> This fic exists because I might have an addiction to Benadryl and say dumb shit when I take it. But at least I found someone that tells me it's okay to say all the weird shit that pops into my brain... nice bonus.
> 
> Like the summary says, the string doesn't lead you to your soulmate until your both ready to "meet." I hope it's not too weird!

Whenever Tobio sits down for a moment and plays with the red string wrapped around his right thumb, he wishes he could only see his own thread. The world is vast and beautiful, and he thinks that all of these strings wrapping about the world would one day split it open like a watermelon wrapped in too many rubber bands. 

Tobio’s string has always been slack, no amount of pulling, weaving, or movement could make it go taut. Often, he wonders if it makes a ring around the whole earth. It would take him years to unravel its secrets. 

He isn’t in any rush to suss out the reality of the hypothetical; his life centers around the real and present love in his life: volleyball. The weight of the ball and his expectations are tangible to him. It’s a passion that is its own reward. 

Because of that, he never feels jealous as he sees that others’ strings are growing taut, the distance narrowing day by day. He doesn’t care about the abstract concept of love. He can’t visualize it like a quick set, nor does he try to break it down like Oikawa’s jump serve. 

Tobio watches Oikawa’s red string and follows it with his eyes to where Iwaizumi is practicing receives. With a scientific curiosity, he wonders why they’re already so obviously connected at such a young age. Normally, people find the end of their string well into their twenties, even if that person has been in their lives for a while. Tobio’s own parents, for example, went to high school together, but it wasn’t until they met again, years later, that they noticed how their string had untangled and shortened.

Still, he doesn’t think too hard about that cosmic promise, but rather works hard to make sure he’s prepared to meet the fulfillment of a more precious promise he holds close to his chest. He clings to the idea of testing his mettle against someone better; he imagines the neverending clash as exciting as the thunder and lightning that follows a typhoon. 

When Oikawa and Iwaizumi graduate from middle school, taking the constant reminders of actualized soulmates with them, Tobio hones his focus even further. He wants to take his team further and higher. They have the strength; they have the speed, but Tobio is easily frustrated by what he perceives as them not giving each match or practice their all. It grates on him.

At all costs, he wants to be ready. He whispers the words of the promise under his breath, until a time comes when it’s too painful to speak them. Instead, they sit at the top of his head like a crown. Tobio balances himself so it won’t slip away. 

In his last tournament in middle school, he tries to float above the oppressive weight of his own expectations and the ire of his teammates. He doesn’t exactly know what he’s doing wrong.

The first time he meets Hinata Shouyou, he doesn’t think much of the empty pre-match words Hinata throws around. On the court, Tobio concentrates on moving through this match as efficiently as possible. It annoys him that his teammates are allowing their opponents to take a handful of points. To him, it feels lazy. 

The snail’s pace of the match allows Tobio to pay attention to the clumsy, but present athleticism of his opponent. He notes it, admires it, but the frustration that has come to permeate nearly every aspect of his life continues to mount. At the end of the match the words fall out of his mouth, messy and sharp, “what the hell have you been doing these past three years?”

He means them. Just like Hinata seems to mean his promise to get stronger and beat him someday. There’s a short battle inside of Tobio, all these promises getting mixed up in his mind. He admires Hinata’s determination but settles for telling him to get better.

Later, the battle inside him reaches its peak and goes quiet. All that’s left is the sound of a ball he set hitting the gymnasium floor. Just like that, he’s swallowed by how alone he is. Those few seconds of emptiness shatter his haven. On the bench, the loneliness and self-directed anger burn him from the inside-out, and not even the thread on his thumb can save him from it. 

He comes home to an empty house that night, not even bothering to turn on the lights. There’s a battle between which he should do first: shower or eat. He wants to concentrate on these daily tasks, but there’s a pain lodged solidly in his chest. No amount of rubbing at it can make it go away. The shame of the loss and his own behavior feels like lead in his veins. 

The decision makes itself, and his numb fingers tie up the laces of his outdoor sneakers. With the door clicking behind him, he steps out into the night. His muscles are still warm from the game, but he takes a moment to shake himself out anyway. 

The night air wants to cling to winter, despite what the calendar says. That’s fine with Tobio; let this chill in his bones match with the atmosphere. As he finishes warming up, he watches his string flutter in the wind. 

His loneliness rears its head again, causing his heart to start violently in his chest. For the first time in a long time, Tobio wonders what kind of person is on the other end. What would they think of him, if they knew about today? Would they understand why he kept pushing even after the cracks in his team started to appear? He desperately wants his soulmate to absolve him of his sins. Isn’t his soulmate someone that would know him better than any other? Could their words devour the shame he cannot stop choking on?

Tobio starts running. He follows the waving red string glowing in the low light of street lamps. As his lungs start to burn, he wonders if he can follow it to its end. He doesn’t care about being ready. He’s the only person out on these streets, nothing distracts him from his mission. 

He zips up and down the same streets over and over, knowing that he’s chasing his own trail. The string only shows him the path he takes everyday, from school to home, from home to school. It’s not a pattern that can be altered and unwound so easily. The string is a measure of time, not distance. 

When Tobio’s legs are wobbly and too exhausted to stay on pace with his heart, he admits defeat. The tears on his face are from the strain, but inside their crystals is the pain of the end of middle school volleyball. The iron in his throat is from his exertion, but the desire to be better is a bitter taste on his tongue. 

The gym he calls home for the next three years might as well have a red floor. All of the strings he can see nearly block out the wooden floor shining beneath them. The lighting is more yellow than the harsh lights of his middle school’s gymnasium. Karasuno’s gym feels warmer, cosier in comparison. The team is smaller, too. 

The knot of pain in his chest is still tender, but seeing Hinata again, despite the surprise, makes him excited to keep playing volleyball. It’s annoying how he’s still so terrible, but Tobio will work with it. He  _ has _ to work with it, if he wants to show the captains that he can be a team player. Shouldn’t it be obvious? Volleyball is a team sport, after all. 

But Hinata  _ is _ weak, and Tobio’s priority is the 3-on-3 game coming up this weekend. He’s serious about not putting the ball up for Hinata until the dumbass can actually receive a ball. What’s the point if the plays can’t connect? 

Tobio’s scared of being called selfish, his shoulders always tight with the tension of waiting to hear the words. However, Hinata accepts that challenge and every challenge that follows ever after. 

During the 3-on-3 match, he adjusts his sets to Hinata’s inexperience. It’s not working, but he can’t do anything about it right now. Tsukishima won’t stop digging his hands into the wound in Tobio’s chest, but he won’t be goaded even as the irritation piles up. 

He confesses why he won’t try to play outside of Hinata’s realm of possibility. “The idea that no one will be there when I put up the ball scares me down to the bottom of my soul.” It’s a painful admission.

Behind him, Hinata takes control of the conversation. It doesn’t matter to him what middle school Kageyama was like. He outlines his plans for the future, with Tobio setting for him, if they can get through this game. “What else matters right now besides that?”

It’s an interesting sentiment. It grates on Tobio that Hinata thinks he’ll be starting on the team when he can’t receive consistently. Still, during the next rally, Hinata calls out to Tobio, already in the air, “I’m here!”

Caught up in Hinata’s rhythm, the ball bounces off the tips of Tobio’s fingers and into Hinata’s swinging palm. When the sorry excuse for a spike lands, Tobio instinctively wraps his left hand around the thin string around his own right thumb and gives it a violent tug. It’s still as loose as ever, but Hinata’s words are another promise he carries in his treasure trove. It’s another jewel on the tarnished crown on his head. 

Later, during another practice match when the team is still calibrating, Tobio makes his own promise for the first time. He watches Hinata drown in his hunger. Despite the ever present, yawning pit in his own chest, Tobio throws him a lifeline.

“As long as you’re with me, you’re the greatest.”

When Hinata manages to evade the blockers and secure the point, Tobio watches the string around Hinata’s thumb as it floats down from the zenith of Hinata’s jump. For the first time, he thinks that bright red that covers the earth is beautiful. While he waits for the next rally to begin, Tobio tugs at his string again, but he still doesn’t know what he would do if he were to feel resistance instead of slack.

Tobio keeps his silly promise as well as he can. Hinata blasts pass block after block, taking his job as decoy seriously. He believes that every swing of his arm will pay off with a point for their team. This undeniable trust from Hinata is a balm on pain in Tobio’s chest. 

On the day of their first tournament as teammates, Hinata reminds Tobio of the promise he made a few months before. He wants to scoff when Hinata emphatically says, “even if that takes ten years or twenty, I’m going to do it!”

Doubting Hinata, he fires back, “then that means you’re gonna stay on the same playing field as me the whole time, right? Even if that’s at the top of the national stage or the top of the world?” 

Hinata looks shocked for a moment, but he recovers from it as quickly as he recovers on the court. With a loud, trembling voice, he replies, “you bet I am!”

Not knowing how to respond, Tobio grabs the top of Hinata’s head to squeeze the annoying energy right out of him. As Hinata struggles against Tobio’s hand, he wonders how many promises he can carry inside of him until they become too heavy to bear.

Hinata’s thirst for improvement is scary, and it makes Tobio wonder if this is what he, too, looks like from the outside. He’s scared for a couple of weeks when Hinata’s greed threatens to tear the team apart. Tobio is building a foundation he can stand on with this team, but Hinata says it’s not good enough and takes a jackhammer to his work. When the blows are finished and the words are scattered to the wind, Tobio finds that this team is just as insatiable as him. Hinata’s just as hungry as him. 

At the next training weekend, Tobio watches Hinata waiting in the warm up box. He’s wrapping the string on his right thumb around his fingers, not really paying attention to his action. His sharp focus is on the court. 

Tobio is struck once again by the realization that Hinata understands Tobio’s love of the game because he feels it, too. The thought is in and out of his head within the space of one moment,  _ wouldn’t it be nice to have a soulmate like Hinata. _ He waves the thought away, no use creating wild expectations. He’s still more excited to face bigger and better opponents across the net. With Karasuno, he wants to challenge teams even stronger than Fukurodani. They’re all waiting for them at the next tournament, and Tobio resets his posture, ready for the next rally.

From that day forward, the soulmate promise starts to balloon inside of Tobio. Hinata seems to always know what to say to make Tobio crave that extra step, that extra set. Matches going into deuce in a seemingly never-ending climb doesn’t phase them much, as long as they can win. 

The pain in his chest becomes less of a wound and more of a sore muscle. He balances on the mountaintop of his skill and reaches a titan arm down to his spikers. With his support and the foundation of the third years, they climb. They keep climbing up and learn how to breathe the same air as Tobio. It’s thrilling, but he’s cautious. He pushes only just enough. He doesn’t want an explosive fight like the one he had with Hinata a few months ago, and the shadow of no one spiking his set still threatens to swallow him from the periphery. 

Learning everyday how to adjust to others, he doesn’t realize he’s lost sight of himself until Hinata puts a new crown upon his head. He’s given the permission to be himself. Hinata has taken all the gems out of the old crown and polished those promises until they begin to shine again. The promise of the best opponent sits at the base; his promise to make Hinata the strongest forms the sides, reaching and curving toward the sky. The largest jewel, the promise to fight each on the highest stage, gives the crown weight. It makes him hyper-aware of his every movement. Sprinkled throughout are rich rubies, the shiny glow of the promise of a soulmate. Hinata seems to hang in the air, his red string once again creating a high arc, but this time, it’s surrounding Tobio.

He feels the absolution he had been craving since the night he chased his string throughout the city to no avail. When Hinata touches back down on the ground, Tobio pulls at his own string, finally admitting to himself that, yes, he wishes more than anything that Hinta is his soulmate. 

It’s still slack. Tobio gives it one more violent tug, catching Hinata’s attention with the movement. He looks up at Tobio with a question in the slant of his eyes. Tobio tries to look anywhere else, but everyone in the gym is looking at this ridiculous pair of crows, and it feels safer to keep looking at Hinata instead. The question becomes a smile and a request to be given the next set, too. 

Tobio knows it’s a bad idea to fall in love with anyone who isn’t his soulmate. He’s sure there are people who do, though he’s not sure if that ever ends well for anyone. Before Hinata, he wasn’t even sure if he would ever fall in love, even with his own soulmate. For Tobio, it was only ever volleyball. Yet, here he is: sixteen and loving the way Hinata pulls him forward. He feels like he’s wrapped more tightly around Hinata’s finger than the strings that flutter around their thumbs. 

They move through high school in this orbit. Even after they suffer grueling defeats that leave Tobio breathless and starving, they can stand up straight because they have each other. The team changes, and they evolve, moving forward, forward, forward. Tobio is certain that Hinata will always be running beside him. He’s a step ahead here, a step behind there. They are constant in their inconsistency. With every new, bright and shining challenge, Tobio knows that Hinata is waiting in his shadow for the right moment to take flight. 

This kind of eternity is worth more than gold. To protect this pocket of forever, Tobio puts his love for Hinata under a basket and asks it not to burn so feverishly. He hopes he can tuck every stuttered heartbeat and every golden smile into this darkness. 

When Hinata tells him about Brazil during a water break at practice, the basket gets knocked aside. The oxygen he had been denying the flames fuels them now. All he can do is burn. 

His voice sounds desperate and devastated in his own ears, “you said we’d play the same field the whole time.”

Hinata’s eyes are sharp and his mouth is tight when he says, “Kageyama, if I don’t do this, I won’t be able to keep my promise.”

“You already aren’t,” he fires back. Tobio puts his hands behind his back and begs the universe to listen to him this time. He tugs on his string and meets no resistance.

Hinata doesn’t let him win, “I’m going to beat you, someday. You said the top of the world?”

Tobio nods.

“I’m not asking for your permission,” Hinata continues. “I’m telling you, so you’ll be ready when I come back.” He socks Tobio in the arm. 

In retaliation, Tobio digs his knuckles into Hinata’s fibonacci swirls that make up his orange hair. “I’ll be ready to wipe the floor with you. While you’re off getting sunburned, I’m going to the very top.”

Hinata hooks a leg around one of Kageyama’s and sends them toppling to the gymnasium floor. In a tangle of awkward teenage limbs, he says, “See you there.”

Over the next few years, Tobio rockets forward. Every experience is deconstructed and remade as he works through adapting to new teams and new plays. His v-league team, the Adlers, takes the championship three years in a row, and he takes great pride conducting that sweet symphony. There are defeats so crushing that make high school look like a poorly produced drama. He gets through it all because of his love of the game and the small updates that light up his phone screen once in a great while. 

It takes until Tobio sees Hinata in the hallway of the arena for him to realize that they are finally going to be clashing against each other on the same stage. He can’t help the smirk and the needling, his mouth unable to contain his joy. Seeing his old teammate, rival, and the person he likes the most wrapped into one athlete makes him feel like he’s floating in space.

Their meeting feels like fate, and Tobio knows Hinata means to fulfill his promise. On the other hand, Tobio has plans to make him fight for it. He’d be more than happy to force Hinata to battle against him for years before giving up this win.

The red lines all around them only get thicker as teammates and foes begin to emerge from the locker rooms. By now, Tobio’s accepted his soulmate is out there, somewhere, but it’s not Hinata Shouyou. Right now, he doesn’t even have the urge to check. He’s grown out of the habit.

When Hinata’s first spiked ball slams into the court, Tobio feels his competitiveness and adoration war within him. He doesn’t mind the conflicting feelings, he’s had years to sit with them. They are the fuel on the fire on his heart. 

Even the rallies that go poorly make him smile. Today, like any other day, but also unlike anything he’s ever felt before, volleyball is fun. He watches Hinata jump higher than ever, and it makes Tobio's heart take flight. 

His own muscles feel like they're in peak condition. His serves are rockets, shooting stars that make the most beautiful noises when they smack against the arena’s floor or braced forearms. The only concern is that his right arm feels a little heavier than usual. Carefully, he puts in the extra work to ensure his serves and sets are up to his own standards. He can’t afford to play sloppily ever, especially against Hinata. 

When Hinata flubs a jump serve, Tobio allows himself to antagonize him across the net. Their eyes meet and Hinata pulls an ugly face that shows Tobio what he’s thinking. It’s funny and cute, but Tobio quickly resets his brain to be ready for the rally. 

The match continues. Hinata pulls out all the stops and shows off his skills one by one. He has spent years refining the raw talent that had made Tobio envious when they were teenagers. Now, those skills shine like diamonds refracting sunlight. It’s blinding; it’s maddening. The eternity between every point is everything he’s always wanted from volleyball, from a rival. He thinks to himself that Hinata is the greatest opponent he will ever face. 

At the match point, with Hinata’s face before his in the air, time seems to stop. In that space between heartbeats, the words of the first promise float through his head, “ _ If you get really good, I promise you somebody who’s even better will come and find you.”  _

Tobio blocks the ball, believing he’s kept his team alive for now, but Hinata, same old Hinata who has been remade through fires Tobio can’t fathom, saves the ball with his foot. Racing to the other end of the court, Tobio jumps to block Bokuto’s spike, but his right arm doesn’t come up in time. He hears the ball hit the floor behind him. 

The whistle blows. In that moment, Tobio is in a vortex of pride, loss, and happiness that feels like it will take him right up to the ceiling. He hears Hinata cheer, and he opens his eyes. They lock eyes through the net.

Hinata has his string held in his hand. In a steady motion, his left hand winds it around his right. It’s hypnotic. Tobio takes a step toward him.

He says, “you made it.”

Another deliberate twist makes Tobio take another step, pulled along by his right hand.

Hinata answers, “yeah, I’m here now.” 

Confused, Tobio looks down at his hand. It’s taut. He feels it tug again. Looking back up at Hinata, he sees his string- their string wrapped around Hinata’s fingers, just like he’s always been. 

Tobio has no words; he can’t think of anything to say.

Hinata smiles, a little watery, “that’s 1,096 wins for me, and 1,100 losses.” He stops winding the mess of string and pulls Tobio so hard his face almost hits the net. To keep that from happening again, he ducks under it and crosses over to Hinata’s side. 

“Though,” Hinata considers, “maybe I should bump that up to 1,097.”

Tobio grabs Hinata’s wrapped hand, and looks at the color of their string. It’s the same bright red as everyone else’s, but Hinata’s reminds him of all the beautiful spikes he’s seen from him over the years. 

“Why’s that?”

“Because I noticed we were soulmates before you did,” Hinata explains. Tobio wants to wipe the grin right off of his face. 

“At least I was paying attention to the game,” he quips back. 

“I noticed  _ and _ still beat you. I feel like I should get to bump it up for 1,098, now.”

Annoyed and in love, Tobio whispers, “no way, dumbass.” With his free hand, he cups Hinata’s face. It’s warm, and Tobio feels like he can feel Hinata’s racing pulse just like this. Hinata laughs and leans up on his tiptoes. 

When their lips meet, Tobio realizes all the promises in his life are wrapped up into one person, one string he never truly believed in, until now.

  
  



End file.
